One of Libya's rival governments has said that a report by an international human rights group accusing it of abuses contains false accusations. Earlier this month, the London-based watchdog Amnesty International issued the report, which documents abuses against migrants by a state-funded security agency in western Libya.

The Tripoli-based government of Prime Minister Abdel Hamid Dbeibah said late Thursday that Amnesty's report "lacked professionalism and credibility."

Thousands of people packed Jerusalem's tense Old City on Friday for the burial of veteran Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, after Israeli police stormed the start of the funeral procession.

The United Arab Emirates' President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan died aged 73 on Friday, state media said, after battling illness for several years.

Thousands of Palestinians are expected to attend the funeral on Friday in Jerusalem of an Al Jazeera journalist who witnesses say was shot dead by Israeli forces earlier this week while covering a military operation in the occupied West Bank.

Recent days have seen an outpouring of grief from across the Palestinian territories and the wider Arab world over the death of Shireen Abu Akleh, a veteran on-air correspondent who spent a quarter century covering the harsh realities of life under Israeli military rule, which is well into its sixth decade with no end in sight.

Thousands gathered to mourn a slain Al Jazeera journalist in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah on Thursday, as the head of the Palestinian Authority blamed Israel for her death and rejected Israeli calls for a joint investigation.

Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American reporter who covered the Mideast conflict for more than 25 years, was shot dead Wednesday during an Israeli military raid in the West Bank town of Jenin. Journalists who were with her, including one who was shot and wounded, said Israeli forces fired upon them even though they were clearly identifiable as reporters.

Israel on Thursday approved the construction of more than 4,000 settler homes in the occupied West Bank, an Israeli rights group said.

It's the biggest advancement of settlement projects since the Biden administration took office. The U.S. opposes settlement construction and views it as an obstacle to any eventual peace deal with the Palestinians. Most of the international community views the settlements as illegal.

Iraq has agreed to pay $1.6 billion in debt to Iran by June 1 to secure a steady gas supply for power generation through the summer, its electricity minister said.

Chronic underinvestment through decades of war and sanctions has left Iraq dependent on imports from its eastern neighbor for a third of its gas needs.

Qatar's emir arrived in Iran on Thursday for talks with the Iranian president, state media reported, as efforts to save Tehran's tattered nuclear deal with world powers hit a deadlock.

State TV showed the arrival of Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani at Tehran's Mehrabad Airport, where he was received by Iran's senior vice president Mohammad Mokhber. The report said said bilateral, regional and international issues are on agenda during the visit.

An Al Jazeera correspondent who was shot dead on Wednesday during an Israeli raid in the West Bank was a highly respected journalist in the Middle East whose unflinching coverage was known to millions of viewers.

News of Shireen Abu Akleh's death reverberated across the region. The 51-year-old journalist became a household name synonymous with Al Jazeera's coverage of life under occupation during her more than two decades reporting in the Palestinian territories, including during the second intifada, or uprising, that killed thousands on both sides, most of them Palestinians.

The U.S. envoy to the U.N. on Wednesday said the killing of Palestinian-American Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh as she covered an Israeli army raid in the occupied West Bank must be "investigated transparently."

"We're encouraging both sides to participate in that investigation so that we can get down to why this happened," U.S. ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said, adding that Washington's "highest priority is protection of American citizens and the protection of journalists."